


a little time we can borrow

by TheArcticRequiemLobster



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018), 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Blood, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Corpses, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Death, Emotional Manipulation, Flashbacks, Ghosts, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hill House, Illusions, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inspired by The Haunting of Hill House, Knives, M/M, Manipulation, Necrophilia, No beta we die like XXC, Non-Consensual Touching, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Self-Harm, Suicide, Torture, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, Yi City Trio, corpsefucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:09:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27359311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArcticRequiemLobster/pseuds/TheArcticRequiemLobster
Summary: Xue Yang smirked when Song Lan stuttered and froze at the sight of Xiao Xingchen. They met under the big chandelier, all lit up by the power of the illusion.Only Xue Yang could see the layer beneath it. The dust and rot and mold. The darkness. The vines that had crept in through the shattered windows and had taken over. He heard Song Lan's choked breathing and stifled sobs. His shuffling footsteps.Over that, though, was the beauty he'd created for them - a gift for Xiao Xingchen.
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén, Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi, Xiǎo Xīngchén/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28
Collections: Dark MXTX Month





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following days & prompts:  
> Oct 26 - Gore/body horror  
> Oct 29 - Necrophilia  
> Oct 31 - Torture
> 
> I'm not sure it will make much sense if you haven't seen The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix...
> 
> Sorry it's a couple of days late - my bad. 
> 
> (title from 'heavenly day' by patty griffin, same song linked in the fic)

The illusion was powerful enough that Xue Yang could watch it play out from his perch on the upper floor of the house. He sat on the banister, watching the little banter thing Song Lan did with his friends - none of them were really there, but if he knew that, he didn't care. The last one stepped to the side, and Xue Yang smirked when Song Lan stuttered and froze at the sight of Xiao Xingchen. They met under the big chandelier, all lit up by the power of the illusion. 

Only Xue Yang could see the layer beneath it. The dust and rot and mold. The darkness. The vines that had crept in through the shattered windows and had taken over. He heard Song Lan's choked breathing and stifled sobs. His shuffling footsteps. 

Over that, though, was the beauty he'd created for them - a gift for Xiao Xingchen. [The song's first notes rang out](https://youtu.be/zrIrDM48K10) after their kiss ended, and Xiao Xingchen took up Song Lan's hands and wrapped one of them around his waist before lifting the other in the air and settling his own on Song Lan's shoulder. He stepped backwards and started them in their dance, the same one from the wedding Xiao Xingchen had told Xue Yang about so many times now. 

He stepped up on the banister and walked along it, following their progress around the center of the house - through the short hall and statuary, past the big picture windows along the back side of the house that looked out into the overgrown gardens, along the short hall on the opposite side, and back into the foyer. It was a blessedly short song. 

Xiao Xingchen, at least, was aware of the illusion, even if he couldn't see past it. Xue Yang didn't allow that. He pressed his lips to Song Lan's once more as the song's last notes rang out, and then he stepped away, though their hands were still connected. Song Lan was crying. Xue Yang was certain some part of his mind knew none of this was real. 

They had bought this house years ago, just after they'd been married. Xiao Xingchen had finished his very first project as an architect, and he'd wanted to fix up the house, make it their 'forever' home. Whatever the fuck that meant. Xue Yang had mocked him plenty for his idealism. The house was a monster. Xiao Xingchen knew that now. He hadn't back then. Neither of them had. 

Xiao Xingchen led Song Lan up the stairs. Xue Yang let the illusion drop for Xiao Xingchen. He couldn't sustain it much longer. The house wanted Song Lan and was allowing Xue Yang to feed off of it for that purpose, but there were limits. Song Lan still stared adoringly at Xiao Xingchen. But he  _ noticed _ Xue Yang once he leapt down from the banister. 

"It's all right," Xiao Xingchen soothed, petting Song Lan's hair. Xue Yang gritted his teeth and smirked for Song Lan. He didn't know how he appeared to him - as his dead-self or his ghost-self. Song Lan didn't flinch, so probably as his ghost-self. Xue Yang had seen his dead-self. It wasn't a pretty sight. "He - he can help. Don't you want to stay?" Xiao Xingchen held Song Lan's face between both hands, looking up into his eyes, sounding so pleading and earnest. "Please. Stay."

"I -" Song Lan gripped Xiao Xingchen's wrist with one hand. He wanted to argue. 

"The house will never let you go," Xue Yang told him. He let the illusion around them fade, allowed Song Lan to see the rot and dust and dirt, the broken and boarded up windows, the vines and rocks and broken glass. The detritus from where he and Xiao Xingchen had been partway through their renovation before... Well, before Xiao Xingchen had died. He looked at Xiao Xingchen. "I'm almost tapped out. I gave you your moment. I can either make it painless or I can give him the truth. He doesn't get both." Not if Xiao Xingchen wanted him to make sure he and Song Lan stayed on the nicer side of the house. The nastier side was far worse. Xue Yang bridged the gap between the two, though he knew where he rightfully belonged. 

"What does he mean?" Song Lan asked. "Who is this?" 

"Xue Yang," he introduced briefly. "We can give you the details later." They all heard the creaking begin at the bedroom side of the long hallway. "You have about two minutes to make up your mind." 

"I'm sorry," Xiao Xingchen whispered, kissing him again. "I'm so sorry. It won't - it won't let you go. It was never going to let you be free." 

"It's just a house," Song Lan protested weakly. Xue Yang laughed. He was ignored. 

Xiao Xingchen shook his head. "You know it isn't. It will keep you here. But - but we can be together now. Don't you see?" He was smiling through his bloody tears. Xue Yang hated him so much. Sometimes. Whenever he didn't love him to the point of pain. "We can - we can be happy. Like we wanted. Like we promised." 

"I can't, I -"

"You don't get a choice," Xue Yang snapped. He shoved Xiao Xingchen away from Song Lan. Song Lan's features twisted into horror and shock, and Xue Yang knew he'd seen either Xiao Xingchen or himself as their dead-selves rather than their ghost-selves. It didn't matter. His hold was weakening. He was running out of time. He could already see the crazy bitch at the last bedroom door, and Song Lan absolutely did not want to tangle with that one. She still held a grudge against Xue Yang.

He was stronger as a ghost. Faster, too. He gripped Song Lan's shirt by the collar and dragged him down the opposite hall. Song Lan fought and tried to hit him, but the blows felt like feathers. He couldn't hurt a ghost. His feet tried dragging against the rugs, but they just bunched and pulled, they didn't have any traction on the hardwood. Xiao Xingchen followed, trying to murmur reassurances, but neither Xue Yang nor Song Lan were listening. 

Xue Yang rounded the corner and reached the library balcony. He shoved Song Lan up against the railing, knocking most of the breath from his lungs. He was glad he no longer had to breathe. He didn't miss breathing at all. In his shock, Song Lan didn't fight when Xue Yang crushed their mouths together. 

"It will help, it will help," was all Xiao Xingchen could say, again and again. He was crying again. "I'm sorry, my love. I'm so sorry." He reached out with one hand, just enough to brush his long fingers down Song Lan's cheek. 

And then Xue Yang shoved him over the railing. 

"Well, that wasn't pretty," Xue Yang said dryly as Song Lan's head slammed into the corner of a desk down below, his skull splitting open. His body thumped to the floor and twitched. He turned at Xiao Xingchen's hitching sobs and wrapped his arms around him. "Sorry, babe, but you know I had to do it." Xiao Xingchen nodded against his shoulder. 

"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you." 

Xue Yang planted a kiss to his forehead and then gently pushed him back. "You'll have to protect yourselves for a while." He smirked. "Sorry." And then he vanished. 


	2. Chapter 2

In-between times were the worst. 

He'd been in a sensory deprivation chamber sort of thing, once. Like the old movie  _ Daredevil _ . Floating in water but with earplugs and it was pitch goddamn fucking black. He'd been weightless. It had felt like nothing at all. After just a few minutes, he couldn't even feel the water on his skin. That was what the in-between times were like. 

He'd been dead a while - time wasn't fucking linear so it was hard to tell - so, sometimes, he could make himself think about things rather than focus on all the nothing. 

He didn't like thinking about his life that much. It had been a shit life. Orphaned, abandoned, abused. Had his finger cut off by some sick fuck when he was seven. Turned to drugs and some prostitution here and there by the time he was fourteen. On and off the streets. Not so much as a high school diploma to his name. Got mixed up with the actual fucking mafia, then got burned. Somehow managed to walk his way from whatever tiny, no-name town he'd been body-dumped in all the way to Hill House. He'd broken in, tried to stop the bleeding. 

Xiao Xingchen had shown himself in the first five minutes, but he hadn't been able to help. The house had eaten him alive in less than three hours. He'd rotted in the kitchen for two and a half weeks, one arm half gnawed off by rats before the so-called caretakers had found his body and reported it to the police. They'd taken his body away, but he'd stayed behind. He'd watched himself decay. 

Xiao Xingchen had been kind to him, though. He'd sat in silence with Xue Yang when all he'd wanted to do was watch himself rot. He'd shown him the house. He'd explained the other ghosts as much as he could. He hadn't known much. 

Once his body was gone, the nastier ghosts had come out to play. Xiao Xingchen never stuck around for them. He willingly went to the darkness, the nothing, the in-between, rather than deal with them. Xue Yang, who had at that point only experienced the darkness once and had never wanted to go there ever again, had stayed. He'd learned them. He'd always bitten off more than he could chew in life - at least the consequences in death were less severe. 

He didn't know their names. Didn't care to. He could refer to them by pithy epithets or physical descriptions and Xiao Xingchen usually knew who he meant. There were a lot - a few innocent, some mostly neutral like Xiao Xingchen, and most nasty. Xue Yang had been fairly nasty himself, but when a few of the others - like Crazy Bitch and Monster in the Basement - had tried to gang up on Xiao Xingchen, he'd stepped in and protected him. Ever since, it had been something of a battle of wills between the nastier ghosts and the nicer ones. Xue Yang found himself stuck somewhere in the middle some of the time. The rest of the time he was either doing his own thing or being a little shit to the other ghosts just to fuck with them because he could. 

Xiao Xingchen was… so ridiculously kind to him, though. He would seek out Xue Yang and join him wherever he was, no matter how well he tried to hide. The red room was simultaneously the best and worst place in the house: it could become whatever one wished it to be, but it could also hurt whoever was inside. Memories of the living were the most painful thing in the world for the dead, and the house fed on them. 

That was how Xue Yang learned of Song Lan. He found Xiao Xingchen in the red room one day. Xiao Xingchen didn't often go there on his own. He knew the power the room held. He'd been dead longer than Xue Yang. But when Xue Yang had opened the door, he was sitting in the middle of the floor in a room that looked like something from a stylish, modern-ish apartment or something. He was sobbing his eyes out. 

"What happened?" Xue Yang sat beside Xiao Xingchen. He'd gone full-dead. It didn't bother Xue Yang - even if he'd only been dead a few months at that point, he'd seen enough corpses in life and he'd watched his own body rot away. Xiao Xingchen was stunning even as a corpse. His throat was cut, the wound gaping open across the side of his neck. His skin was green and a little rotted. His tears looked dark, like old blood. 

"Song Lan - Zichen," Xiao Xingchen whispered, turning and hiding his face against Xue Yang's shoulder. "My - my husband. I saw him. The house -" His breath hitched and he twisted to wrap his arms around Xue Yang. "The house showed me our condo, our bedroom, before we moved here." His laugh was wet and choked. "The night he proposed." 

"Shit," Xue Yang muttered. He'd seen the wedding band on Xiao Xingchen's finger, but he hadn't thought much about it. "Why are you crying? You, like, miss him or whatever?"

"Every moment," Xiao Xingchen whispered. He sat back and looked at Xue Yang. "This house almost made me kill him." His appearance flickered back to the way he looked as a ghost - perfect and whole and beautiful. "I - I dreamed it. That I held the knife to his throat instead and cut it open. I couldn't - I couldn't do that." He laughed again, smiling so sadly as tears continued to roll down his cheeks. "I couldn't kill him, couldn't let the house make me do that." 

"So you turned the blade on yourself," Xue Yang said with a nod and a little smirk. "Sucks to be you." 

"Why are you so cruel?" Xiao Xingchen asked him, his voice broken with sobs. 

Xue Yang sighed and sat back, resting his weight on his hands. It took work to make himself appear as his dead-self rather than his ghost-self - conscious thought and effort. Xiao Xingchen made a wounded sound and flinched away from him. "Because,  _ babe _ ," Xue Yang drawled, "you got your happy ending, at least for a while. You think I showed up here in the state I did because of some accident? I'd been, what, jumped and beaten? Some poor, tragic, sad story that you made up in that pretty little head of yours?" Xue Yang laughed, mocking and cold. He jerked forward - a flash of movement too quick for Xiao Xingchen to follow - and shoved Xiao Xingchen over on his back, hovering above him, his one four-fingered hand planted on the floor beside his head. He lowered his face to hover a hair's breadth over Xiao Xingchen's mouth. "I deserved what I got. I deserve to be here, stuck like this. I don't belong with you poor little innocent souls that the house decided to chow down on for a good meal." His smirk widened. "I'm worse than the others. Wanna know why?" 

"Get off," Xiao Xingchen whispered. 

Xue Yang pressed his lips to Xiao Xingchen's, hard and unforgiving. "I'm not crazy," he whispered. "Not like that psycho bitch, and I'm not the same kind of monster like the one in the basement. I'm worse because I knew exactly what I was doing the whole fucking time I was doing it. I knew it was wrong, I just didn't care." He slammed his hand around Xiao Xingchen's throat and forced his rotted, dead tongue into his mouth. Xiao Xingchen tried to twist his head away, but Xue Yang held him too tight, his thumb catching under his jaw and digging bruises into his ghostly skin. He bit hard on Xue Yang's tongue, and it came off in his mouth. 

Xue Yang laughed and laughed, the sound muted and odd without his tongue as he sat upright and Xiao Xingchen gagged and tried to vomit. He let Xiao Xingchen crawl away from him. It was nothing to pick up his tongue and set it in his mouth once more. It reattached seamlessly. Xue Yang loved being a ghost. 

"You want to hurt me, pretty boy?" he crooned. He crawled forward on his knees, backing Xiao Xingchen up against the wall. "Come on, baby, rip me apart. You know it won't stick. It never does. Those other ghosties try so hard. It doesn't even hurt." He cackled again and pressed even closer, his nose brushing along Xiao Xingchen's pale cheek. He nipped at his earlobe. "Be grateful for what you had, babydoll. Don't cry about it. You know as well as I do that the house will get your man back for you one day." He bit down hard - hard enough that it would have drawn blood on a living, breathing, person. "Until then, either stay out of the red room or enjoy what it shows you." 

He rocked to his feet, then, letting his ghost appearance settle into place. He yanked at a lock of Xiao Xingchen's hair before turning and walking out of the red room to go cause mayhem elsewhere for a while. 


	3. Chapter 3

There were times when the red room would trick him. He would wander, a little confused, a little lost, a little… scattered. It happened to all of them. When Xue Yang saw one of the others wandering, he left them alone, let them do their own thing. Xiao Xingchen usually tried to step in and help them, tried to do what he could to settle them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes Xue Yang deliberately got in the way and fucked them up worse than they already were. 

Sometimes the red room snapped them up quicker than anyone else realized what was happening. 

The worst part was that… time wasn't fucking linear. Xue Yang would find himself in the bright white room in the basement of Carp Tower with a knife in his hands, a faceless and nameless body tied to a chair in front of him, Jin Guangshan or Jin Guangyao in the corner asking questions that meant absolutely nothing to him as he carved away his new toy's flesh bit by bit until they'd given all the information they had to give. Or until they died. Whichever happened first. 

He stood behind the current plaything, knife pressed just under his jaw. The idiot had just confessed, sobbing and bleeding everywhere. Xue Yang had barely even gotten started. He'd only cut off one finger - one joint at the time - and spooned out a single eyeball, leaving it attached and dangling. He'd started with a few cigarette burns and some of the usual fingernail ripping and teeth pulling but those were such little things. He hadn't even had a chance to eviscerate him properly yet, slicing open his stomach with expert precision so that he could scoop out intestines and organs and let them sit in a perfectly sterile bowl in the guy's lap for a minute or two before stuffing them all back inside and sewing him back up. If he was allowed to leave the room, he could even survive - if someone got him to the hospital fast enough. Xue Yang was always careful enough not to nick anything important. 

Then -

"Xue Yang?" 

The soft, slightly horrified tone. Xiao Xingchen's face. The bright red door on the other side of the stainless steel. 

A bare flicker of pause for Xue Yang for him to realize - to remember - where and  _ when  _ he was. 

He grinned widely and curved the knife around the guy's throat, slicing it open from ear to ear. He didn't sever the carotid, just opened it up a little, enough for arterial spray. The bright red blood splattered everywhere, arching high. Xiao Xingchen flinched and almost choked when it sprayed over his face and neck - just a quick spurt. 

Xue Yang waited until Xiao Xingchen was looking at him again before he lifted the knife and licked the blood from the flat of the blade. He'd never done that when he'd been alive, but oh - the red room's illusion was powerful. Copper and iron, bittersweet, tangy. He grinned, feeling the blood coat his teeth. 

Xiao Xingchen turned and fled. 


	4. Chapter 4

Xue Yang was a potent food source for the house, apparently. He continued to find himself in that fucking room. The illusions were rarely half so nice as murdering someone at someone's else's command. He saw himself be beaten when it was decided he was no longer worth the trouble of his up-keep. He watched the first time he'd been raped. He watched Chang Cian cut off his finger. Again and again and again. 

That one was a favorite. 

He was just seven years old. Chang Cian had found him on the street after his foster family of the month had locked him out of the house. He was dirty and grimy, starving and desperate. Chang Cian had made him deliver a message to someone in exchange for a promise of food - a plate of sweets. Xue Yang had done so and had been beaten for his efforts. Xue Yang had found Chang Cian and clung to him, crying and begging for the food he'd been promised. 

Chang Cian kicked him to the ground and stomped on his hand until all his fingers and every bone in his hand was broken. One of his cronies had given him a knife and Chang Cian had sliced off his pinky finger. A threat and a reminder. 

The illusion always ended after that. Xue Yang always came back to himself, curled in a tiny ball in the corner of the moldy red room, sobbing and screaming and clutching his left hand to his chest, full of so much hunger and rage and pain that he thought he might consume everything in the house. 

This time, Xiao Xingchen was holding him. His head was pillowed on his thighs. Xiao Xingchen's arms were wrapped around him. Xue Yang hit him as hard as he could - not that it did much damage, they were both already fucking dead - and scrambled away from him. He put as much space as he could between them, but the door to the red room was shut tight. It wouldn't open yet. Not until it was ready to free them both. 

"What the  _ fuck _ ," Xue Yang spit at him. "Did you see? Did it show you?" 

"I'm so sorry," Xiao Xingchen whispered. Xue Yang could see the tears on his cheeks. Even as his ghost-self, they still looked like blood. "Xue Yang -"

"No!" Xue Yang screamed at him. "You don't get to pity me! Fuck you!" He kicked hard at the door. "Fuck you! Fuck this goddamn house! Fuck everything!" He curled around himself, shaking and panting and trying to stop fucking  _ crying _ . "Goddamnit. Fuck." He knew he sounded like shit from screaming during the shitty illusion and crying like the seven-year-old he'd been all of thirty seconds ago. 

Xiao Xingchen's arms wrapped around him again from behind. He couldn't fight this time. He was fucking exhausted. Drained. The house had taken so much from him lately. He was going to go to the in-between again if he fought. 

He hated the in-between. The  _ nothing _ . 

They rocked back and forth gently, Xiao Xingchen whispering things Xue Yang couldn't quite hear or understand. It didn't matter anyway. He let Xiao Xingchen hold him upright, keep him afloat, ground him in the present rather than let him slip off into the in-between. 

"I'm sorry," Xiao Xingchen said again. 

"Don't pity me," Xue Yang muttered, refusing to look away from the red door. "I don't want it, and I sure as fuck don't need it."

"Why should I not feel sorrow at your suffering?" Xiao Xingchen asked, tightening his arms. "You were so young, so small. That man never should have done such a thing. And - where were your caretakers?" 

Interesting, that he hadn't said 'parents,' Xue Yang thought. "Foster family locked me out." He shrugged. "I'd probably deserved it. Some cop found me a few days after that shit happened and took me to the hospital. It was nothing but group homes after that. No one wanted a broken kid, and I was always more trouble than I was worth." He laughed. "There's some really kinky bastards out there that get off on amputation, though, and for some of them, a finger is enough to count. Made plenty of money that way. Lots of back-alley hand jobs." He expected perfect Xiao Xingchen to throw him off and be disgusted - that was the intention - but Xiao Xingchen didn't let go, didn't flinch, didn't even ease up on his hold. 

"How old were you?" 

"Fourteen the first time." Xue Yang didn't know why he'd answered. He didn't know why it mattered. "Got mixed in with the Jin family after I murdered Chang Cian. That fucker you just saw. I was seventeen. I killed him and his entire family." He laughed, even if it was weak. "I started with his wife. Did her first. Right in front of him. Then I made him watch as I did the rest of them. I didn't even let their fucking dog live." 

"Why?" The whisper was soft and a little choked, but still Xiao Xingchen didn't let them go. 

"You saw why," Xue Yang spat. He sat up and pushed Xiao Xingchen's arms away. "He shattered my hand and cut off my fucking finger. It was  _ my  _ finger. Those - those were just someone else's lives. What did they matter to me? How could they possibly mean as much to me as my own finger?" He put his back to the wall exactly beside the door. "Do you know how hard it is to learn how to do everything without a finger? You know how they say you have to relearn how to walk if you lose a toe? Same thing, but you have to relearn how to hold things. How to do  _ everything _ . It was my fucking finger and that goddamn prick cut it off because I was crying too much." Xue Yang smiled. "He broke his promise."

Xiao Xingchen stared at him, face solemn. "Has anyone ever kept a promise they've made to you?" 

Xue Yang thought about it, tapping his chin for added effect. Then he smirked and tipped his head to the side. "What do you think, babydoll?"

"I think they haven't," Xiao Xingchen said quietly. He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. 

"Aw," Xue Yang mocked. "Is this therapy hour? Tell me,  _ doctor _ , do you think that's what's fucked me up so badly and turned me into a serial killer?" He laughed at Xiao Xingchen's sharp look. "You saw the other time," he tsked. "You know that wasn't the first murder. I've just confessed to more." He held out his arms, wrists together and up over his knees, as if he were waiting to be handcuffed. He'd never actually been arrested before. If he had, he'd never have gotten away with so very many murders. "Are you going to  _ call the police _ ?"

"You're already dead," Xiao Xingchen said coolly, his eyes narrowed. "And I'm not a priest." He shifted his gaze to the side to stare at the door. "The house feeds on you more than it does the others. Why?"

"Probably because it's already milked them dry," Xue Yang said, letting his head thunk against the wall. "And I have  _ plenty  _ of shit for it to use against me and take and take and take." He laughed. "Why doesn't it feed on you? Got nothing for it to use?" He snapped and pointed at him. "Oh  _ wait _ . You do! Your perfect little happy marriage and life. But you forget. I've seen your dead-self." 

Xiao Xingchen's face crumpled and he hid against the tops of his knees. "Yes. I killed myself. The house didn't do that." He took a very deep breath and exhaled slowly. "It… drove me mad, though. I tried to kill my husband. I held a kitchen knife to his throat. I tried to poison him. I tried to push him off the library balcony." His finger tightened around his calves. "I hated myself so much for what I was doing to him. For how I was ruining everything. And I couldn't see… I couldn't see that it was the house doing it. Zichen refused to accept it either." He sniffed softly. Xue Yang rolled his eyes. "I'm just glad he left, after. I'm glad he never came back." 

"Where'd you do it?" Xue Yang asked. 

Xiao Xingchen looked up at him with bloody eyes. "Why do you care?"

"Curiosity," Xue Yang said simply. "You've seen my shit. Tell me yours." 

"In the master bathroom. Right - right in front of him. I made him watch. I think that is what hurts the most. That I made him suffer that with me. He tried so hard to save me. And he couldn't." He gave Xue Yang a small smile, his cheeks creased with blood. "We'd spent months in this house doing nothing but hurting one another, and I… I had to hurt him worse than he ever hurt me." 

"That's fucked up," Xue Yang said lightly. Xiao Xingchen looked away again. "What? It  _ is _ . You want me to lie and say it's fine? That he's probably forgiven you? Baby, I can almost promise you he hasn't." 

"I hate you so much sometimes," Xiao Xingchen whispered. 

"Good," Xue Yang said cheerfully. "I hate you too." He hated that it tasted like a lie. 

He hated even more that he would never get to taste his favorite candy ever again. 

The door clicked open. 


	5. Chapter 5

The banister that wrapped around the upper floor was one of Xue Yang's favorite places to sit during the day. The boarded over windows let in a bit of light up there, and while he couldn't do much to affect the physical world, he could do a little. 

He'd learned wood carving and whittling years ago. It was good practice for figuring out exactly how to move a blade, just how much pressure to exert, which angle was necessary for the right effect. He'd liked carving shapes into skin, later. He'd died with a butterfly knife in his pocket, and he'd kept it with him as a ghost, probably because he'd had some variation of one with him for more than ten years. It wasn't the right sort of blade for carving into the newel posts, but it was the only one he had - and at least it never dulled. He'd made a simple rabbit shape on one downstairs, just to see if it would work. It was the same way he'd used to cut apple slices for himself - and for Jin Guangyao's nephew the few times he saw the kid. He'd expected the mark to fade, but it hadn't. 

He was slicing away at the wood on the newel post bit by bit. He wanted to try his hand at one of the lion's heads, like the ones shaped into all the brass doorknobs. It was coming along decently enough, he supposed. He'd probably try again on a different one later. 

Most of the ghosts fucked off during the day. The nicer ones tended to take over the house at that time, wandering here and there and doing their own thing. Xiao Xingchen liked the kitchen and the library, the fuck-off big dining room. Xue Yang stuck around on the top floor, mostly. He liked watching the others, occasionally fucking with them. The kids were the worst. He'd shoved that little fuck in the wheelchair - the one that liked to bang on the walls and scream all goddamn night - down the stairs more times than he could count. 

The other ghosts would, sometimes but rarely, come out to play during the day. The closer to night it got, the more likely it was to happen. Time was so tricky anyway. Xue Yang heard the rattling door and ignored it. Probably just the fucking kid again. Dipshit couldn't even figure out how to make shit work for him and he'd been dead for a hundred years or so. Xue Yang didn't have sympathy for idiots like that. 

He paused when he heard the laughter. It wasn't the kids laughing. He looked up. 

The lady in the nightgown - the pale one, not the red one - appeared before him. "Go," she whispered. He never did figure out why she was so damn sad all the time, but she had some kind of connection outside of the house that let her leave. He hated her for that alone. He couldn't step one single toe outside, not even in the fucking garden out back. 

He stood and flicked the butterfly knife closed, slipping it into his pocket. "You gonna give me some help or what?" 

"It's Poppy again," the woman in the red nightgown said, appearing on his other side with a sigh, shaking her head. She looked at him with those big-ass, creepy eyes of hers. The house had used her for a  _ long _ time. She'd been its favorite before Xue Yang. "She's got your friend." She smiled and did that little awkward laugh white people always did. "I'm sorry, I can never say his name right." 

Xue Yang shrugged and walked away from her. "It's cool, I don't even know yours, bitch." 

"Why are you always so mean?" the sad one asked, following behind him. 

He stopped at the part of the hall that led to the bedrooms and looked over his shoulder at her. "Why are you so fucking depressed?" She frowned at him, and he flipped her off before continuing. She never went toward the bedrooms if she could avoid them.

He stopped at the room where he'd heard the laughter and pounded hard on the door. "Come out you fucking crazy bitch!" He shoved again until something in the lock snapped - old doors, old locks - and he twisted the knob to get in. Xiao Xingchen was standing against one wall, his eyes squeezed shut, his face turned to the side. 

Poppy - and Xue Yang figured he probably wouldn't remember, but he might bother just because he wanted to find a way to kill a ghost - was pressed up against his chest, her hand all over him, licking his cheek and giggling between speaking too low and too fast for Xue Yang to make out the words. 

Xue Yang grabbed her by her hair and yanked her back. It wouldn't hurt her, unfortunately. He tapped her forehead with two fingers and listened to her scream and fade to her dead-self before she vanished to the in-between. It was only temporary. She would be back. He turned and looked at Xiao Xingchen, who was trembling all over. 

"Fucking shit, pretty boy, it's not that bad," Xue Yang said with a smirk. "She might be a frootloop, but she's not ugly." 

Xiao Xingchen didn't even look at him. "Please," he whispered. 

"Please what?" Xue Yang asked, rolling his eyes. He gripped Xiao Xingchen's shirt and hauled him out of the room, slamming the door behind them. He took him down to the library he liked so fucking much and shoved him into one of the chairs. Xiao Xingchen gripped his hand before he could step away. 

His eyes were doing that creepy thing with the bloody tears again. "All I can feel is  _ her _ ." He shuddered. "Make it stop. Send - send me away. Like you did to her."

"No," Xue Yang said, smirking at him. "It doesn't help. You'll be stuck in the in-between with nothing  _ but  _ that feeling of her all over you." Xiao Xingchen shuddered again, his eyes squeezing shut. "What do you want to do, huh?" 

Xiao Xingchen looked up at him. 

"Kiss me properly," he demanded.

Xue Yang's smirk widened into a full blown grin. He lowered himself to hover over Xiao Xingchen, bracing his hands on the arms of the chair. "You didn't like my last one, babydoll?" he crooned. 

"I did not enjoy your tongue coming off in my mouth," Xiao Xingchen said, his voice hollow. He reached up and gripped Xue Yang's collar. "Kiss me properly, or I will find a way to banish you to the in-between." 

Xue Yang was surprised he hadn't already learned how to do that, but it made sense that he hadn't done that to Poppy himself. He leaned in closer and pressed his lips to Xiao Xingchen's, almost chastely, before biting hard at his bottom lip and pushing his tongue into his mouth. He sat on Xiao Xingchen's thighs, grabbing a fist full of his hair at the back of his head and tilting it backward. His other hand clawed at Xiao Xingchen's shirt, finding his way beneath it to slide his four fingers over smooth, cool, ghost-skin. 

Xiao Xingchen flickered to his dead-self when Xue Yang bit down the side of his neck. Xue Yang didn't stop, didn't even pause - he licked over the slit in his throat, prodding at the dead, rotten flesh with his tongue. Then Xiao Xingchen flickered again and was back to his ghost-self. He gripped Xue Yang's ass and hauled him even closer, rocking his hips up and moaning desperately. 

He was still fucking crying, but Xue Yang wasn't about to let a little blood stop him. He never had before. He licked over Xiao Xingchen's cheek. Laughing as Xiao Xingchen flinched away at that. It didn't taste like anything at all, and he was disappointed. He yanked at Xiao Xingchen's clothes, unbuttoning his trousers and unzipping his fly. He licked his hand for spit more as a habit than by necessity. They were fucking  _ dead _ after all. But Xiao Xingchen's nails bit into his ass hard as he gripped his cock and worked him over with too-fast and too-tight jerks, his mouth attacking his lips again, biting and sucking. He could almost imagine the blood there had a taste.

The moans between them were sharp but smothered. Xue Yang undid his own jeans and added his cock to the mix, too, and Xiao Xingchen moved one hand to wrap his fingers with Xue Yang's. It could have been sweet or romantic or any of that shit if it wasn't so fucking punishing for the both of them. Xue Yang bit hard at Xiao Xingchen's neck, and Xiao Xingchen ripped off a piece of Xue Yang's shoulder. His nails dug ribbons into his back under his shirt. Xue Yang yanked so hard at Xiao Xingchen's hair he was tearing it out by the handful. 

Xiao Xingchen came first, screaming into Xue Yang's mouth, and Xue Yang bit through his lip when he spilled across their hands a few seconds later. They sat like that, bloody and torn and disheveled. Xue Yang laughed wildly. Xiao Xingchen hid his face against Xue Yang's shoulder. Xue Yang let a handful of his pretty hair fall to the floor. He gently pushed him away and separated their bodies, making himself stand. It took seconds for them to go back to how they had been just moments ago. But Xue Yang could still  _ feel  _ it. 

Xiao Xingchen sank back against the chair, his head rolling to the side as he stared up at Xue Yang. "I can't feel  _ her  _ anymore. So, thank you." 

"Anytime, babe," Xue Yang said with a mocking salute. "Most I've felt since I died." He laughed again. On impulse, he ducked closer and pressed another open-mouthed kiss to Xiao Xingchen. "Later, hot shit." 

Then he turned and walked away. He spotted the depressed chick watching him from the statuary with a small smile on her face, but she didn't say anything. He rolled his eyes at her and went back to his place on the banister on the top floor. The carving he'd been working on was gone. He cursed and grabbed his knife to start working on it again. 


	6. Chapter 6

"Young master, please, come quickly." The Bible-thumper lady had run toward Xue Yang where he was sitting on the weird couch-thing in the statuary. She usually avoided him like he would eat her soul or something if she so much as looked at him for too long, but now she was grabbing his wrist and pulling him upright. "You're needed urgently."

"Why?" He snatched his hand away from her but remained on his feet. "I'm not here to fight all the mean little ghosties for you." 

She gave him a whithering look. "It is your… companion," she said stiffly. "Xingchen, he said to call him. He is…" She chewed her lip for a moment. "He is stuck in a loop." 

Xue Yang sighed loudly. "Where?" He scraped his hair back away from his forehead, even if it never did any good. "You know I probably can't help him, right?"

"You can," she said, shaking her head and waving her hand for him to follow. They walked around to the foyer and began to climb the stairs. "You are the only one of us who can affect the dead, you know. Poppy… well, she can make the living sleep and see their worst nightmares as if they were really happening. And Nelly can wake them from those dreams. But you?" She eyed him over her shoulder for a moment. "You are far more dangerous than the rest of us." 

"Just because you haven't figured out how to do it yourself yet -"

He cut himself off. The woman in the red nightgown was sitting on the floor outside of the master bedroom, her husband's arms around her. She was crying, asking, "Why won't he just wake up?" again and again. Xue Yang frowned. 

The Bible-thumper looked at Xue Yang. "Please. You should do what you can. For his sake. And… for ours. It's difficult for us to watch something like that so many times." 

He brushed by her and went into the room, ignoring the two on the floor in the hall. He could see the open bathroom door and the woman in the pale nightgown. She was crying, too. He grimaced. What was it with all these people fucking crying all the time?

He walked into the room and… sort of understood. 

Xiao Xingchen was standing in front of the sink, facing away from them, a knife in his hand. It looked like one from the kitchen. His eyes were bleeding. It looked like he'd stabbed himself in each of them - not deep, but badly enough. His hand was trembling as he raised it high and slashed at his own throat. 

It was a deep, brutal cut. Blood flowed immediately from the wound, soaking his white shirt. He choked a little and stumbled to his knees, then fell to the side, his body convulsing as he struggled to breathe. Xue Yang watched with narrowed eyes for the long moments it took for his body to die. 

"Why won't you stop him?" the woman asked. 

"He's already dead," Xue Yang said, shrugging. "What do you really expect me to do?" 

Xiao Xingchen's body became immaculately pristine once more and he stood, the knife in his hand. He was crying - tears, not blood - as he looked at someone who wasn't there. He raised the knife. The woman - Nell? Nelly? - darted forward and tapped two fingers to his forehead, but whatever she was trying to do didn't work, and she made a frustrated sound in her throat, choking on another sob. 

"Stop him!" she yelled at Xue Yang. 

He stood and watched as Xiao Xingchen turned the blade on himself, digging the tip of it into one wide-open eye and then the other. The blood flowed freely down his cheeks, so much like the bloody tears he'd seen before. It took a long time before he sliced open his throat again, collapsing on the floor and bleeding out over the black and white checkered tiles. 

"Xiao Xingchen," Xue Yang called as soon as he'd stood, perfect and whole once more. He didn't respond. "Enough. You're making all the other ghosties cry." He rolled his eyes as Xiao Xingchen gestured to whoever it was only he could see - probably his husband. He stepped forward and grabbed Xiao Xingchen's arm, but it did no good. Xiao Xingchen jerked through his hold and still managed to jam the tip of the knife into one of his eyes. 

As he raised the knife to jab it into the other, Xue Yang put his hand over Xiao Xingchen's eye. The blade hit the back of his hand and stopped. Xiao Xingchen froze for a second. Now that the cycle had been interrupted, Xue Yang figured that would be the end of it. 

But Xiao Xingchen drove the knife deeper into Xue Yang's hand, the blade slicing through the meat and bones of his palm, until the hilt hit his skin, and he could stab his own eye with the tip of it. The wound wasn't as deep, but it was still there. He ripped the knife from Xue Yang's hand, tearing it to pieces. Xue Yang stared at it for a moment while Xiao Xingchen did his death scene thing. 

"That - that's not how it's supposed to work," Nell whispered, her hands covering her mouth. Xue Yang ignored her. 

He watched Xiao Xingchen raise the blade again. He didn't know if he really could affect the dead the way Bible-thumper lady had implied, but… well. Now was a good time to test that theory, wasn't it?

He stepped into Xiao Xingchen's space and grinned as the knife sliced into his throat instead. He gripped a handful of Xiao Xingchen's hair and crushed their mouths together, biting hard at Xiao Xingchen's lips. 

For a split second - a moment so brief he questioned if it really happened - he could taste the blood on his tongue. 

And then Xiao Xingchen dropped the knife in a loud clatter, ripping himself away from Xue Yang with a shout. Xue Yang waved and grinned. He could feel the in-between yanking at him. 

He knew, as it consumed him, that he had, somehow, done too much by preventing that little cycle of death and torment. Whatever it was he could do, whatever power he had, it cost something for him to use. He poked and prodded at that train of thought for a long time, but it wasn't enough to keep him quite  _ together _ by the time the in-between spat him back out into the house. 

Xiao Xingchen appeared immediately, touching his cheek and clutching his hand. Xue Yang let him - it was better than the feeling of nothing at all. 

"Why would you do such a thing?" he demanded. "Why would you let me do that to you?  _ How  _ can you do these things?" 

"You were making the other ghosties cry, babydoll," Xue Yang said, rolling his eyes. "And I don't know how. But I want to figure out what else I can do." He gripped Xiao Xingchen's wrist. "If I do that, I'm going to need you. I can't deal with the nothing in the in-between, got it? So if you want my help with the other ghosts, if you want  _ anything _ from me at all, you do this for me." 

Xiao Xingchen blinked at him a few times. "What - what do you need from me?" 

Xue Yang grinned and grabbed his hair to hold him still as he kissed him roughly, not quite biting this time. "Sex is good," he said, licking a stripe along Xiao Xingchen's cheek and shivering a little as he felt like his body - sensation, or at least a good fascimile - had come back to him. "But I'd take you ripping me apart, too, babe. I could teach you how to do a better job with that kitchen knife." He chuckled low in his throat. 

"What do I get in return?" Xiao Xingchen whispered. He was very, very still under Xue Yang's touch. 

Xue Yang nipped at his collarbone. "Depends on what you want. Depends on what I can do, too. I don't know yet." 

"I want Zichen back," Xiao Xingchen said, gripping Xue Yang's face in both hands and holding him back a little to stare at him. "I want my husband back. Here, with me, forever. Can - can you at least try?" 

The woman in the red nightgown appeared beside them. Xiao Xingchen didn't even try to move away, but they both looked at her. She had that weird smile on her face, the one Xue Yang didn't trust. 

"Oh, sweetheart," she said gently, cupping Xiao Xingchen's cheek with her palm. "The house will get him here for you eventually. It will only take a little time. It gets everyone back." She laughed a little. "It gave me back some of my family already." She sighed, a little wistfully. "There was nothing it could do about my eldest son - it was an accident, I know that. I've always known." She had a far-off look in her eyes for a moment, then she shook her head and smiled again. "But it will bring you your husband. One day." She nodded earnestly. "You just have to keep him when he comes." She shrugged a little and laughed quietly. "You can manage that, right?" She looked at Xue Yang. 

"Probably," he said with a shrug. Xiao Xingchen's hands slipped down to his throat. "I have to figure out what I can do, first." 

"We'll help," she said brightly. "Hugh and I, and Nell, too. We'll do all we can."

"Don't need your help, lady," Xue Yang scoffed. "Just his." He bent his head and bit down on Xiao Xingchen's wrist. "The in-between takes everything from me." 

She shook her head, but she looked faintly amused. "You're just like the house that way, you know? You feed on others. You're feeding on him, now. It's not the same, not quite, but…" She shrugged. "If you had died in a different place, you'd have turned into a place very much like this, I think. The first ghost, the one that consumed all others." 

Well, that was fucking creepy. 

Xue Yang grinned at her and flashed to his dead-self. It was enough to make her flinch. "Might not want to offer to help, then," he warned. 

She nodded and walked away, and Xue Yang turned his attention to Xiao Xingchen before letting his ghost-self settle into place once more. Xiao Xingchen stared at him for another moment in silence. 

"I'll help," he agreed. "Sex and violence are the only way?" 

"The only ways I want," Xue Yang said flippantly. "How about this? I'll even let you choose what to give me. If all you want to do is rip me apart every time, I'll take it." He grinned. "What do you say, babydoll? Wanna cut me open and spill my guts? Literally?"

"Not today," Xiao Xingchen said with a small smile. "But I don't think we should do this here." He linked one of his hands with Xue Yang's and stepped back. "There are plenty of bedrooms to make use of, after all." 


	7. Chapter 7

When Xue Yang finally emerged from the in-between, after killing Song Lan and trapping him in the house forever, he came out gasping and  _ starving  _ for touch in a way that he hadn't been so desperate for since he'd first begun his experiments with what all he could and couldn't do. Xiao Xingchen found him immediately and wrapped his arms around him in a crushing embrace, 

"Make it hurt, Xingchen," he begged, his fingers digging into Xiao Xingchen's back. He needed, more than anything, to feel something greater than the aching numbness. He had no idea for how long he'd been gone, but he had the sense that it was a long time. "Please." 

"Shh," Xiao Xingchen said gently, rubbing his back and kissing his hair. "It's all right. We'll go to the red room." 

That was almost a threat.

Still, Xue Yang let Xiao Xingchen drag him up the stairs and through the bright red door. They'd figured out a long time ago that Xiao Xingchen didn't like causing people pain. He had no stomach for it. He could, if he had to, but he didn't enjoy it. So they used the red room like a weapon. 

It worked every time. 

Xue Yang was immediately thrust back into a memory. It was the house's favorite memory. The one where he was seven, and Chang Cian cut off his finger. 

He came back to himself screaming and sobbing, as usual, still feeling all of the pain and rage of his seven-year-old self and clutching his left hand to his chest. As had become the norm, Xiao Xingchen held him in his lap, one arm wrapped tightly around his back, the other clutching his left hand with him - tight to the point of pain. 

Xue Yang shuddered and reined in his sobs, breathing hard and embracing the sensations with open arms. He still wanted more. It was like he had been frozen for too long, and this remembered pain was enough to thaw his outsides but not enough to touch the core of ice at his center. 

"It's not enough," he whispered into Xiao Xingchen's stomach. 

Xiao Xingchen rubbed his back. "Listen to me before you become angry," he said quietly. It made Xue Yang tense immediately. "I am not breaking my promise. If you do not like my suggestion, I will still do all I can to help you." He squeezed Xue Yang's left hand even tighter. "I swear to you, I will. But Zichen -"

"No," Xue Yang spat immediately. 

"Listen first," Xiao Xingchen said with infinite patience. "Only listen." He waited for more protests, but Xue Yang was too tired, too numb for them. "Zichen can give you what you need where I cannot. He will, if we ask, if we explain. It has been… months, Xue Yang. I've been so desperately worried." He took a deep breath and lifted Xue Yang's left hand to press the gentlest of kisses to the missing pinky joint. It thawed that one tiny spot to the point of bright, white-hot pain, but Xue Yang knew it would be impossible for that method to work everywhere. "I've told him so much already, but I avoided most things about what you need and what doing all that you can takes from you. He knows enough that there is a price to be paid for it, but not how much it costs. He has come to terms with what I begged you to do to him, and he doesn't blame you. He is grateful as well, now. He understands. And… he will do this, if we ask, if we tell him. And he can make it hurt for you, if that's what you need." 

Xue Yang curled tighter around Xiao Xingchen. "I don't want  _ him _ ," he spat bitterly. 

"I know," Xiao Xingchen murmured, brushing his free hand through Xue Yang's hair. "But I can be there with you the entire time, if that will help." He bent over Xue Yang and kissed his hair. "I would rather do this another way, but if it must be pain… Song Lan will do a better job than I ever could."

Xue Yang rolled back a little too look up at Xiao Xingchen. "Kiss me," he demanded. Xiao Xingchen smiled at him. He helped Xue Yang sit upright, then carefully - far more carefully and gently than he usually did - cupped his face with both hands and brought their lips together. It wasn't chaste, not with the way he slid his tongue into Xue Yang's mouth and nearly to the back of his throat, but it felt more like two mostly-innocent teenagers making out than it did anything they'd done before. 

Xue Yang pulled away from him, his lips and tongue buzzing with warmth. More dead-cold built up over the rest of him. He stood and walked away from Xiao Xingchen, even if the door wouldn't open for him yet. It rarely did so soon after that memory it had just taken. 

"That's it then, huh?" he asked, refusing to look at Xiao Xingchen. He crossed his arms over his chest. "I got him back, I did what you asked, so - that's it. I'm worthless to you now." 

"Xue Yang," Xiao Xingchen said quietly, like he was wounded. 

"Shut the fuck up," Xue Yang hissed, jerking around to face him. "You have your  _ husband _ again, your perfect little ghost reunion. I made it fucking goddamn beautiful for you, too. I wasted so much time, so much of  _ myself _ for you, Xingchen." He laughed. "You promised." He kicked the red door hard enough to make it rattle violently on its hinges. "And now that I'm a fucking block of ice, you're trying to shove your promise onto someone else. Because you can't fuck me anymore." 

"It's not -"

Xue Yang jerked around and slammed into him, pinning Xiao Xingchen against the wall by his throat. "I didn't tell you to say anything," he spat. "I don't want anything from you." He stepped back, fully intending to send himself back to the in-between and  _ stay _ there until he was nothing at all. 

Xiao Xingchen grabbed his arm, his long fingers digging into his skin hard enough to hurt. "I never said I could not fuck you," he said, "or that I didn't want to. You are the one who said you needed to be hurt, Xue Yang. We both know I am terrible at that. If you  _ want  _ pain, Zichen is better equipped to give it to you. If you want sex, then all you had to do was say so. Zichen already knows. He doesn't like it, but I've told him he doesn't get a say in this. I was dead for so long, and he was alive. He had other partners, in his life. I have you, still." He bent and pressed another of those too-gentle kisses to Xue Yang's forehead when all Xue Yang wanted was to be ripped apart. It burned. "You will have to learn to share, that's all."

He didn't want to share. He pushed Xiao Xingchen away and stepped back to the other side of the room. Xiao Xingchen looked like he was trying to hide how devastated he was, but he was doing a frankly shitty job of it. Xue Yang turned away from him. 

The door unlatched with a soft click and swung open a few inches. He grabbed it and pushed it open wide. Song Lan was standing there on the other side, his expression completely blank except for a tightness around his eyes that could have been anger or worry. 

"Go back to your husband and your perfect little afterlife," Xue Yang spat at Xiao Xingchen. "I don't want you anymore." 

The lie sat bitter on his tongue. Xiao Xingchen walked over to him, hand outstretched. Xue Yang smacked it away and shoved him through the door, his palm burning where he touched him. Song Lan caught him in his arms, and the look he shot Xue Yang was definitely one of anger. Xue Yang smirked at him and flipped him off before slamming shut the door to the red room. 

"Do your worst, house," he muttered. "Rip me apart. Take it all." 

And oh, it tried. 

It cycled through his worst memories. He screamed himself hoarse, then screamed until his throat was raw and bloody. He could almost taste it. Every third or fourth memory was that of Chang Cian. 

He was raped at fourteen, by a man bigger and stronger and older than he was. Drugged and too weak and hungry to fight back. Some poor hooker had found him bleeding and naked in an alley and had called the cops. He'd stuck out of the hospital, still high on too many painkillers and limping the whole way. 

He was stabbed at sixteen, the knife cutting into his guts. He'd taken himself to the hospital that time. It had taken two weeks for him to recover enough to get away from the questions, the prying concern, the false pity. 

Jin Guangshan had made him a deal at seventeen when he'd caught wind of what he'd done to the Chang family. He could work for the Jins in return for Jin Guangshan not turning him into the police. He was forced to his knees more times than he could count for the dirty bastard, but he'd long since been accustomed to that sort of thing, and he'd accepted it without too much struggle and only a hint of teeth. 

He died. Over and over and over. Jin Guangyao, who had pretended to be his friend for so many years, had done nothing but use him. He had stolen everything from him - all his creative little nicknacks and toys, all his drug cocktails, all of his methods of torture. He hadn't even bothered to beat Xue Yang himself, just had a few thugs do it for him. He'd smiled that fucking dimpled smile and kicked Xue Yang out of the floor of the SUV and into the dirt. He'd tried to live for revenge. He wanted to kill all those fuckers for what they'd done to him. But then the house had eaten him. And he'd watched himself rot for more than two weeks.

He beat himself against the walls and floor of the red room, tearing apart his ghost-self and dead-self again and again. It never stuck. The blood and viscera and gore would be wiped clean in mere moments, the pain was momentary. 

Sobbing and exhausted and still so, so numb, he lay on the floor staring up at the pattern of black mold that spread across the ceiling like a fungus. His butterfly knife lay on the ground beside him. He'd sliced through his own stomach, dragging his hands through his own guts and ripping out anything and everything he touched. Most of it had already vanished. The blood still painted the floors and walls, but it, too, would fade soon.

The door opened and he heard footsteps. He didn't look away from the mold. A shadow cut across his face. 

"Do you want it to hurt, or do you want Xingchen to make you feel better?" 

Xue Yang grinned, wide and bloody. "Does it even matter?" He finally turned his head and stared at Song Lan. "You want to hurt me, don't you? For fucking your husband? For killing you and trapping you here? For all the fucked up shit I've done?" He grabbed the knife from the floor by the blade, cutting into his own fingers and palm, and held it out, handle-up. "Do it. Enjoy it. It won't stick. We're already dead. The only way I go back to the in-between is if I send myself or the house uses me all up again. So have fun." He laughed, bright and loud and  _ broken _ . 

Song Lan cupped his hand and carefully pried his fingers loose from the blade. It stung white-hot where he touched him. He carefully folded the blade away and tucked it into Xue Yang's pocket. Then he hauled Xue Yang to his feet. He tried to jerk away, but Song Lan wrapped an arm around his back and held him close to his side, half-supporting, half-dragging him out of the red room. 

Xue Yang didn't want to relax against his side, but there was  _ warmth _ there,  _ feeling _ , and  _ sensation _ , and it was so much better than all-consuming  _ nothing _ . 

He blinked. They were by the stairs. He blinked again, and they were in the hallway where the bedrooms were. He blinked again, and Song Lan was laying him down in the big bed in the master bedroom. Xiao Xingchen was there already, and his arms folded around Xue Yang immediately. Xue Yang shut his eyes and basked in the heat like a cat. Xiao Xingchen pressed tiny, dragonfly kisses to his hair and forehead and cheeks. His hands smoothed over Xue Yang's chest and arms. One of them found Xue Yang's left hand and twined their fingers together tightly, and he brought that hand to his lips to kiss over the scarred knuckles. 

The ice was thawing, and Xue Yang felt less numb, but he also felt more frozen than ever. He didn't want to move ever again because it would mean losing this touch, this feeling. He rolled to his side to hide his face in Xiao Xingchen's shoulder. A third hand pressed against the center of his back and he shuddered. It was almost too much. A fourth hand settled on his hip. The touch was grounding, trapping him in his ghostly body, demanding his presence and refusing to allow him any sort of escape. 

Xiao Xingchen kissed him, a little desperate, a little rough. "Days, Xue Yang," he said, his voice choked and distraught. "It has been  _ days _ ." He tightened his hold on him and bit hard at Xue Yang's bottom lip. It made everything light up inside Xue Yang like a kaleidoscope of color. "You have never been in there for so long before. I have been terrified it would never let you out." 

"Stronger than that, babydoll," Xue Yang murmured. "Fucking house can't break me." 

Xiao Xingchen laughed wetly and pressed his forehead against Xue Yang's. "It might break me if you do something like that again." He pressed another soft, lingering kiss to Xue Yang's lips. "I won't ask for a promise, but try, okay? Try not to let it get so bad again." 

"What do you need?" Song Lan's voice was jarring, and Xue Yang's hands tightened around Xiao Xingchen's shirt and hand. 

"Just this," he said quietly. "Just this." It was helping. He wasn't as cold, wasn't as numb. He didn't know how long it would take to feel things as he usually did again, but it was working. 

Xiao Xingchen held him tighter. 


	8. Chapter 8

For the most part, Xue Yang avoided Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen. Things went back to the way they had been back when Xue Yang had first died and joined the house of ghosts. He caught Nell - or Nelly or whatever her fucking name was - staring at him with that depressing ass look on her face now and again, but she didn't approach him. He stopped sitting on the banister around the top floor, avoided the library entirely, and didn't go near the bedrooms. Instead, he usually sat in the statuary or went down to the basement. The monster thing down there wasn't really all that bad, he figured. They left each other alone. It would try to chase him away sometimes, but he had become particularly good at banishing the other ghosts to the in-between, so he sent it away when it got particularly annoying. 

He was carving the little bunny shape - the only one he could ever get to stick - into some of the old wine barrels when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He paused for a split second at the sound, but he didn't turn to see who it was. He didn't actually care. He'd banished the more annoying ghosts enough by now that most of them stayed away. He just hadn't wanted to be bothered, really, though Poppy was still a problem. She was like a fucking venereal disease. It didn't matter how often he got rid of her, she kept coming back. 

The footsteps stopped when they left the last step. Xue Yang still didn't turn to look. He had a feeling he knew who it was. He kept carving, digging the simple rabbit shape into the wood deeper and deeper. Wine began to seep through the wood, and it looked almost like blood. He pressed his finger to it and licked it, and he could almost taste it, like a memory of a long-forgotten flavor. 

"You know -" 

Xue Yang snapped his head around. It wasn't who he'd thought at all. It was the lady in the red nightgown's husband. He didn't think the guy had ever actually spoken to him before. He had an awkward smile on his face. Xue Yang settled against the barrel beside him and flipped around his blade casually. The man didn't seem too bothered. That was a change. 

"You know," he began again, "Liv and I separated once. My oldest son was about two years old at the time. My oldest daughter was just a few months." He shrugged a little. "Liv was tired a lot, I was working all the time. Things were hard. Money was tight. She was finishing school, and I was just getting started flipping our first house. It was a tiny thing a few miles down the road from where we lived so we didn't have to move. A practice run, I guess you could say." 

"Good for you," Xue Yang said, rolling his eyes. "Why do I care?"

The man shrugged. "You don't, not about that. But - it's relevant." He shuffled to the side and rested against the wall. "Liv had a friend, a really good friend. Lisa was her name. They'd dated for a while before Liv and I got married. So, Liv and I separated for a while, just a few weeks. I slept at the other house. Liv invited Lisa to come and help her with the kids and everything." He laughed awkwardly again. "I got home and everything between Liv and I was fine again, but… Lisa didn't leave right away. Liv didn't want her to, and she didn't want to leave either. She and Liv had… hooked up, I think is what you guys call it now." Xue Yang rolled his eyes again. "What I'm trying to say is that it was hard. And really strange, adjusting to that. I didn't mind. Liv needed her friend - and I understood that. It didn't mean Liv loved me any less. It just meant she needed some extra support, some extra love, because I wasn't quite enough at the time. She lived with us for about five years, actually. The three of us worked it out. Lisa and Liv were together, but Lisa and I weren't. There were some fights and some jealousy at first, sure, but… it worked out. It was better, in the end. Liv got what she needed from both of us. And the kids, god. They were so spoiled." He genuinely laughed that time. "They just knew her as Aunt Lisa, but she loved them and they loved her." 

"I don't care about any of this," Xue Yang said, rolling his head back. 

"You should talk to Xingchen and - and Zichen, I think he said his name was." He shrugged. "I'm bad with names. Liv was always better at that. Anyway, you should talk to them and see if you can figure something out." He thumped the wooden beam beside him lightly. "It may not be easy. Hell, it probably won't be. But it might be worth it." 

"Whatever," Xue Yang muttered. He wasn't going to talk to either of them. They didn't want him, and he didn't need them. He was still trying to figure out how to kill a ghost, but as soon as he had it all worked out, he would drain the whole house dry and then get rid of himself as well. It would fucking  _ starve _ . He would make it suffer for all it had done to him. 


	9. Chapter 9

"Hi, Poppy." 

Xue Yang enjoyed the way she startled - jumping and flinching at the sudden sound of his voice. She recovered quick, he could give her that. She turned with a flirty smile on her face, winking and shrugging at him.

"Well heya, sugar," she said, trying for seductive and sweet. She prowled over to where he was standing beside the door to one of the many bedrooms in the house. He didn't know whose it had once been - it wasn't the biggest room. It wasn't where Xiao Xingchen had killed himself. Beyond that, he didn't care. He was a fucking ghost, he didn't need to sleep. 

He held still as she leaned close to his face, keeping his arms crossed over his chest. He smirked at her, tilting his head to the side as he watched her press her fingers to his shoulders and drag them down. She smiled, tipping her chin low and looking up at him through her eyelashes. 

"My, my, my, you are such a pretty one." She giggled like a schoolgirl. "When you aren't trying to be so mean, anyway." She slid her hands to his biceps and squeezed, harder than was necessary. "And look at them arms! Bet you could sweep a girl right off her feet with those." She pressed close, her lips just a hair shy of touching his cheek. "Why don't you, hm? Or do you only want to play with that boy of yours? Betcha I could give you a good time too."

Xue Yang tilted his head back, his chin up. "You wanna try?" She smirked at him. His hand shot out and latched around her throat, spinning them to slam into the wall. She made an offended noise. He leaned into her face, similar to how she had leaned into him, his nose brushing along her cheek. "I can send you to the in-between, but you already know that. I've been thinking, though - what if I don't let you go? What if I just…  _ take _ , instead?" He bit into her mouth, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh around her lips. She screamed into his mouth, but he tightened his grip around her throat and pinned her shoulders to the wall with his other arm. He kneed her in the stomach for good measure, ensuring she wouldn't move for just a few more seconds. 

He did as he usually did with Xiao Xingchen,  _ feeding  _ from her, but focusing on it harder. Demanding more. At the same time, he tried sending her to the in-between with his touch to her throat. He could feel the icy cold seeping into her skin. 

Poppy's ghostly appearance faded into that of her dead-self, but he didn't let go. His teeth bit straight through her moldy flesh. He yanked the mess from her face, ignoring her screams in his ear, and bit her again, gnawing at her cheek, chewing the bits of rotted meat that practically fell from her bones into his mouth. He laughed and swallowed, his fingers ripping out a chunk of her throat. He chewed at her jaw, next, and the sound of her skin separating from the bone was like wet velcro. 

But  _ oh _ he could feel all of her. Her madness and her energy. Everything she had left that the house hadn't already eaten up. There wasn't much. She was like a small snack, just enough to make him realize just how truly ravenous he was. Her meagre soul or life force or what the fuck ever it was that made them all ghosts was like spent candle close to guttering out. And he was the flame burning brighter and hotter to consume the last little bit of what was left of her. 

Poppy's flesh didn't reappear. She couldn't slip to the in-between with his hands keeping her grounded. He consumed her body and her ghost. 

When she flickered from under his hands, he was still chewing another bite - of her throat, this time - and then she and all that was left in his mouth vanished like so much smoke. 

He laughed. 

He felt  _ powerful _ . If only he'd known about this before he'd done that little favor for Xiao Xingchen. The illusion would have been so much better, lasted so much longer. He grinned down at the floorboards. 

"Make your move, house." He kicked at the baseboard. "Let's see how many ghosts I have to eat before I can rip this place apart." 


	10. Chapter 10

The house always fought back. 

Xue Yang should have learned that by now. He knew it liked to take from him in the red room. He knew it fed from his memories and his torment, his suffering. He and the other ghosts were like batteries for the house, constantly recharging it so it never lost its power. It might occasionally allow the others to use some of its considerable power if it meant it was gaining a new food source, but never much. Never enough. And it always took more in exchange. 

When the house felt threatened, it would do whatever it felt was necessary to make sure it remained standing. It was old. It was more powerful than any of the ghosts it held, even the oldest and least-glimpsed. It wasn't… quite sentient. But close. Too close for comfort. 

Xue Yang should have known better than to openly threaten it, at the very least. 

It was Nell who appeared before him to drag him to the bedroom hallway. She was panicked and her dead-self. She didn't bother beginning to explain until they were already out of the basement and she had dragged him through the kitchen. 

"The house is taking him," she said, almost too fast for him to understand. "It's fighting. Whatever you did, it's angry." The entire house was black as pitch, shuddering and groaning from the storm raging outside. A board over one of the windows snapped inward. "You have to stop it. You're the only one who can." She shoved him toward the bedrooms. "Fix it. Go!" Her jaw stretched too far over the scream, distorted and freaky enough to make Xue Yang recoil from her. Combined with the snapped neck bent at that awkward angle, the rotted skin and milky eyes, she was not at all a pretty sight. 

Some of the other ghosts were in the hall. The Bible-thumper was clutching her daughter to her chest. The kid in the wheelchair was banging on the wall again. The tall man grinned widely at him where he stood in front of the door to the master bedroom. 

"You wanna fight too?" Xue Yang asked him. 

The tall man lifted his cane. Xue Yang grabbed a fist full of his coat and yanked him down to bring their faces together. He slammed one hand over the tall man's eyes and held him close by the collar of his coat. He bit off his nose, crunching through the cartilage and swallowing hard. He sucked what little power remained out of him, eating him, his canines cutting the first path through cheeks and chin and throat as he worked simultaneously to banish him to the in-between. It took less time than with Poppy. She'd been stronger than this one. 

As soon as the tall man vanished, Xue Yang gasped. He felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin, like he'd just snorted entirely too much cocaine. He could  _ feel _ everything. The icy wind gusting through the house, the way his clothes settled on his skin, the tickle of hair on his throat and forehead, the smear of blood across his mouth. He grinned and kicked in the door to the master bedroom. 

Song Lan was kneeling on the floor, frozen. Xiao Xingchen sliced open his throat. He bent over Song Lan, cradling the back of his head with one hand, whispering something into his ear. He licked over the gaping wound, lapping at the blood gushing from Song Lan's neck. He shoved his tongue inside the cut, then sank his teeth into the skin, ripping a chunk off and swallowing it with a smile. Then he stepped back. Song Lan's body fell to the floor. It took only seconds before the blood and wound vanished and Song Lan shakily pushed himself back up to his knees, one hand outstretched. 

"Xingchen," he begged, "Xingchen, please stop this." 

Xue Yang stepped over to his side, still grinning. "He can't hear you. The house has him." He could even feel Song Lan looking at him. Oh, it was wonderful. He felt  _ alive _ . He laughed. "Is this all you've got?" He screamed at the ceiling. 

As Xiao Xingchen stepped toward Song Lan again, he moved between them, grabbing Xiao Xingchen's arm and directing that same fucking kitchen knife toward his own belly. He groaned as it cut deep into his side, slicing open his middle. Blood and intestines spilled out over their feet. 

Xiao Xingchen's eyes were solid white. He had such a pretty smile on his face as he twisted his hand into Xue Yang's guts. Xue Yang could feel his hand inside of his body, his fingers curling around the things inside him. He watched as Xiao Xingchen ripped out an organ - he didn't know which - and brought it up to his mouth, taking a large bite out of it as if it were an apple. 

"Trying to use my trick against me?" He tsked and shook his head. "That's not quite how it works, babydoll." He stepped back and let himself become whole once more. Xiao Xingchen raised the knife again, and he grabbed his wrist, holding tight and refusing to let him move. "Fucking house. Give him back." 

He tried to send Xiao Xingchen into the in-between. It was all he could think of to get rid of the house's possession. But Xiao Xingchen didn't vanish. And the house didn't let go. He just smiled and slammed his free hand into the center of Xue Yang's chest, forcing him two steps back. Xiao Xingchen turned toward Song Lan again. 

"Fuck you, then." Xue Yang dove at Xiao Xingchen, knocking him to the floor. Xiao Xingchen brought the knife around and stabbed him in the shoulder. It  _ hurt _ . Xue Yang only grinned through it, crawling up Xiao Xingchen's body to pin him down. "You wanna play, babe?" He felt Xiao Xingchen rip the knife from his shoulder, watched the blood flow over Xiao Xingchen's perfect white shirt. He felt it when Xiao Xingchen stabbed him in his side again and again and again as he fought to get himself free from Xue Yang's grasp. 

"What are you doing?" Song Lan asked - but his voice sounded distant and faint, and Xue Yang didn't have time to answer him, so he ignored the question. 

Xue Yang pinned one of Xiao Xingchen's wrists to the floor. He laughed, low and dark, as he grabbed the other wrist, twisting and wrenching - even though the kitchen knife was still lodged deep in his side and he could feel it slicing into his insides and scraping along his ribs and spine - until he heard the loud snap and crack of the bones in Xiao Xingchen's wrist and arm. He jerked his arm, trying to get his hand free. Xue Yang let him, but the arm fell, limp, by his side, the kitchen knife clattering across the hardwood. 

Xue Yang grabbed Xiao Xingchen's face, holding his chin and cheeks with bloody fingers. "Give. Him. Back." He bent over Xiao Xingchen and kissed him deep, his tongue plundering into his mouth. He was a little surprised Xiao Xingchen didn't bite it off, as he had the first time Xue Yang had done this to him. But Xue Yang pushed all he could into banishing Xiao Xingchen without intentionally trying to feed from him. He didn't want to consume him the way he had Poppy and the tall man. 

He could feel every scrap of power he'd leeched from the other ghosts fading, draining into the effort. He gasped into Xiao Xingchen's mouth, nearly sobbing with the strain. His body had already vanished the wounds Xiao Xingchen had inflicted. There was no more blood between them. Even the knife was on the floor, far enough away that Xiao Xingchen couldn't easily reach it. It was just the two of them. Just their bodies. 

And the house. 

He poured into that desperate kiss every scrap of affection he felt for Xiao Xingchen. He offered it, and the power he had stolen from the other ghosts, he offered  _ himself  _ \- silently - in exchange. The house just had to leave Xiao Xingchen alone. For good, this time. The house knew what he wanted. It didn't want to agree to those terms. It was greedy. Possessive. But so was Xue Yang. 

He forced more of his own self, energy, power - whatever it was - into the kiss, into forcing the house away from Xiao Xingchen. He had not spent so many years, so much time, defending Xiao Xingchen from the house and the other ghosts just to allow it to take him now. Even if he never got this again, he would give anything, sacrifice anything, to make sure the goddamn house didn't get to keep Xiao Xingchen. 

When he felt the arm that had been broken just minutes before wrap around his neck, he thought for a moment that he had lost. That the house had taken everything he had and kept its hold anyway. He had lost his new-found sensations that reminded him so much of life, but… he could still feel the tears under his eyelids. 

Xiao Xingchen's lips moved against his. Their fingers twisted together. Xue Yang sobbed into his mouth. 

"I fucking won, house," he whispered, hoarse and yet still defeated, right against Xiao Xingchen's lips. He didn't open his eyes. 

He was going to go to the in-between again, and… he wasn't certain he would ever come back. 

Could ghosts die?

"I'm not letting you go," Xiao Xingchen whispered against his cheek. "I won't let you vanish again." He wrenched his fingers from Xue Yang's and clung to him with both arms, his fingers digging into Xue Yang's back so hard he could almost feel it. "Take whatever you need. Just don't disappear." 

Xue Yang laughed against Xiao Xingchen's throat, hoarse and brittle. He was only distantly aware that he had become his dead-self. "I don't think you have enough left to give, babydoll," he whispered. "And even if you did - you know what it takes. I need both to stay. I need to  _ feel _ to feed."

"What does he mean?" Song Lan asked. Xue Yang rested his head on Xiao Xingchen's chest and let him hold him for these last few moments. He doubted he'd ever get anything like it again. Why not enjoy it while he could? 

Xiao Xingchen squeezed him even tighter. "Do you remember all I've told you? About what happens when he comes back from the in-between? You've been there yourself. You know it's… nothing. Just darkness. But for him, it's different. I think it's because of the things he can do. Like the way Nell can leave the house. And how Oliva can see things - the past and the future." He paused for a moment, then he pressed a kiss to Xue Yang's hair. He could barely feel it at all, not even the pressure of it, really. He was fading too fast. "Xue Yang needs to feel things, after. Intense things."

"Sex and violence," Song Lan murmured. Xiao Xingchen hummed. "And - and what he said. About feeding?"

"I ate Poppy," Xue Yang said, laughing. "Ate her up. She's not coming back." He shivered. He felt like ice.

Xiao Xingchen understood quicker than Song Lan. "Like the house eats us." Xue Yang nodded once. "Why? How?"

"Figured it out," Xue Yang mumbled. "For fucking with you. Didn't - didn't want her touching you again." He was shaking all over now. "Fuck." 

"You have to help him," Xiao Xingchen said, voice level. He wasn't begging or pleading. He said it like a fact. "He has done so much for me. For us. Even everything I've already told you doesn't cover it all. The only reason I am still here, the only reason you got me back the way I am, is because of him. Because of what he has done." A third hand settled on Xue Yang's back, but he was only distantly aware of it, like the sensation of someone looking at him from across a crowded room. "Sex and violence, Zichen. He needs both. We can't let him go to the in-between. He won't come back." 

Xue Yang laughed again, but it was weak. Almost pathetic. "Just let go, Xingchen. You have your fucking husband back. Your perfect little undead afterlife. I'm just a nuisance." He rolled his head to the side to look up at him. He wasn't altogether surprised to see the bloody tears on his face. "Murder each other for me every now and again, yeah? That was hot as fuck, earlier." He grinned, wide, and Xiao Xingchen choked on a sobbing laugh. 

"You are such a bastard," he said, too gently. "But I'm not letting you go. I can't." 

"We won't," Song Lan said quietly. "I've already promised Xingchen." Xue Yang heard the scrape of the kitchen knife on the hardwood as Song Lan picked it up. "I definitely wouldn't mind killing you a few times for fucking my husband, though."

"We were dead," Xiao Xingchen said, and Xue Yang laughed again at his offended tone. 

"Doesn't mean I'm not still angry about it," Song Lan said casually. 

Xue Yang gasped when he  _ felt  _ the blade slice through his back and into his half-rat-chewed abdomen. His eyes rolled back into his head as Song Lan carved it down the length of his spine down to his hip bone, the blade clanging hard against it. He groaned, arching into the sensation. Xiao Xingchen's arms around him began to burn like fire. He writhed between them. Song Lan ripped the knife out and stabbed into him again, higher, beside one of his shoulder blades. He carved a severe arc around the bone, deep and unforgiving. Xue Yang's entire arm lit up like he'd been electrocuted, his four fingers spasming where he was clutching Xiao Xingchen's upper arm. 

"Fuck," he whimpered. As soon as Song Lan ripped the blade from his skin, the wounds vanished, and he laughed, tipping his head back. "Oh, come on, you'll have to do better than that." He twisted his head over his shoulder, his lips splitting into a wide, crooked grin. He could only imagine the fucked up picture he made as his dead-self, rotted and missing most of his right arm, skin nearly black rather than the prettier greenish tint most of the other ghosts had for their dead appearance. He'd been left for far too long. He grabbed onto Song Lan's shirt with his left hand and shook him. "Rip me apart!" He screamed the words in his face, daring him, challenging him. 

Song Lan brought the blade down over his fingers with enough force to cut them clean off. Xue Yang  _ screamed _ . Xiao Xingchen sat up as he twisted around, keeping his arms locked around him, refusing to allow him to slip away to the in-between. Song Lan stabbed him in the chest - where his heart was, theoretically - and he was shoved back against Xiao Xingchen's chest. The moment his fingers reappeared on his hand, he could  _ feel _ them, feel them like he had feeling when he was alive, like he had feeling after draining Poppy and the tall man. He latched onto Xiao Xingchen's arm and dug his fingers into his muscle, wishing his shirt wasn't in the way so he could feel skin and flesh and bone and blood. 

Xiao Xingchen bit him on his shoulder, ripping off an entire chunk of his skin. He could almost feel it as Xiao Xingchen chewed it up, the way the skin felt as he ground it between his teeth and the warmth and wetness of his throat as he swallowed it. When Song Lan stabbed him again and ripped open his belly, he looked down and watched the old, black blood and moldy organs spill out over his lap and his hard dick. 

"Guess that's not a surprise," he said, tilting his head to the side and grinning up at Song Lan. He jerked his chin up at him. "You think these little love bites hurt, kitten?" He laughed, breathless, as Song Lan jabbed the knife into the side of his knee where it actually fucking hurt. "Gonna have to work a lot harder than that to fuck me up, dollface." 

Song Lan's expression didn't change much. There was a little tightness around the eyes, a pinch to his lips. "Fucking shit, Xingchen, how do you stand his  _ mouth _ ?"

Xiao Xingchen bit Xue Yang's ear hard enough to rip it off, but he spat it out rather than swallowing it, and it bounced down Xue Yang's chest and into his lap. "It's amusing. He thinks he's cute and clever." One of Xiao Xingchen's hands cupped Xue Yang's chin and yanked his head back. "You can always cut out his tongue a few times, if it will make you feel better. I bit it off, once." 

Song Lan sliced open Xue Yang's throat immediately, and his fingers dug into the hole in his throat. Xue Yang moaned, the sound all fucked up between Song Lan's fingers inside his throat and the giant slash through his vocal chords. He could feel Song Lan's fingers gripping his tongue and pulling it through the hole in his neck. When the knife sliced it off, he almost thought he was going to come in his pants.

It only took a few seconds for his tongue to reform in his mouth and the hole in his neck to vanish like it had never been there in the first place. He turned his head toward Xiao Xingchen's face and licked over his jawline. It was the only spot he could reach with the way he was pinned. 

"I liked you better dead," Song Lan remarked, pinning his right arm to the floor and stabbing the kitchen knife through his palm, the blade biting into the hardwood and pinning him there like a dissected frog pinned and flayed. "Where's your butterfly knife?" He shoved his hands into Xue Yang's front pockets and found the handle of the knife easily. 

"Don't leave me hanging like that," Xue Yang said, nipping at Xiao Xingchen's throat and thrusting his hips up against one of Song Lan's wrists. "Come on, cowboy. I've seen you fucking Xingchen in his memories in the red room enough times to know you've got a big dick and you know how to use it." 

Xiao Xingchen covered his mouth with his hand. Xue Yang bit his palm, but he didn't move it. "He did ask for both, Zichen." 

"I don't know how the hell you've tolerated this brat for so long," Song Lan muttered. He flipped open the butterfly knife like someone who had done it entirely too many times before. Xue Yang grinned beneath Xiao Xingchen's hand. He sliced upon Xue Yang's shirt, not bothering to be wary of cutting skin on his way down Xue Yang's chest. He yanked it apart with his free hand and Xiao Xingchen helped to push one side down over his shoulder while Song Lan handled the other. The skin on Xue Yang's chest fixed itself in a matter of seconds, but the shirt did not. Clothes always took a while longer, if they weren't immediately touching his skin. He'd figured that out the hard way in the red room. 

Rather than attempt to cut his way through Xue Yang's jeans, Song Lan stabbed the knife into Xue Yang's chest and left it there for a while, yanking hard at the fly and zipper. Xiao Xingchen held Xue Yang's shoulders in a tight grip as Song Lan lifted him just high enough to tug his jeans down over his hips and ass to his thighs. He paused just long enough to rip the knife from Xue Yang's chest and cut the laces on his boots rather than untie them and ripped them off his feet before shoving the knife into Xue Yang's upper thigh just above where his jeans were. He jerked the jeans from Xue Yang's legs hard enough to hurt, and Xue Yang laughed, his head falling back against Xiao Xingchen's shoulder. 

"Tell your cowboy to make it hurt," he said with a crooked smile. He shut his eyes as he basked in the firey, electric tingle all over his skin. He could feel it as Xiao Xingchen dragged his fingers over his bare chest, as he flexed his hand around the knife still pinning it to the floor. "I want to keep feeling." 

"Take what you need," Xiao Xingchen murmured in his ear, his voice soft and tender. Xue Yang could feel Song Lan's big hands gripping his thighs, pulling them apart and settling them on either side of his hips. "He's only been in the red room once. He has more than enough for you to take. As do I. You know that." 

Xue Yang's left hand gripped Xiao Xingchen's arm where it was braced across his chest. "Promises, promises," he whispered. 

Song Lan ripped the knife out of his thigh and jabbed it into his side. A second later, he gripped Xue Yang's hips and lifted him high enough to force his cock inside him - no warning, no prep, not even lube. Xue Yang screamed through it, alternating it with sharp, high laughing. Song Lan's cock felt like a fucking log inside him, or like a knife. 

But as soon as his cock was deep inside him, Song Lan ripped the knife out of his side and buried it in his guts. Xue Yang ripped his right hand away from the knife pinning it to the floor, and he reached out, grabbing Song Lan's throat and squeezing until his fingers began to dig into the skin. He  _ took _ and  _ fed _ from Song Lan, from whatever it was that made him a ghost. 

If Poppy had been a burned out candle, Song Lan was one that had only just been lit - the wax hardly even beginning to melt. 

That little spark of pain deep inside Xue Yang thawed the last of the ice that blocked out all other sensation as Song Lan began to thrust. He left the blade in his guts, and it jerked with every movement. Song Lan's fingers bit bruises and bloody scrapes into his hips that faded and reformed over and over. He arched his back just to feel the knife dig deeper. Xiao Xingchen slid one hand down his chest, around the blade, and his long, slender fingers encircled Xue Yang's dick, stroking and pumping in time with Song Lan's deep, brutal thrusts. 

Xue Yang was shaking again, for an entirely different reason this time. 

He felt greedy and drunk on the power he was consuming from them both. 

"You aren't making it hurt anymore," Xiao Xingchen said, almost as if he was making light of the situation. His hand left Xue Yang's cock and he gripped the handle of the butterfly knife, twisting it sharply. Xue Yang cried out - and even he wasn't sure if what he was feeling was pleasure or pain, not anymore, he was lost in a haze of mere  _ sensation _ . Xiao Xingchen yanked the knife from his stomach and offered it, handle-first, to Song Lan. "I'll hold him." 

Song Lan let one of Xue Yang's legs fall to the floor, and he took the knife. Xiao Xingchen bent forward, bending Xue Yang nearly in half, and he gripped the back of Xue Yang's thigh, pulling it back toward himself. Song Lan carved a deep line up the back of that same thigh, then bent over it and licked along the cut, sliding his tongue into it. Xue Yang moaned at the feeling of his tongue inside the back of his thigh, licking along the muscle. The blood was still on his chin and cheeks when he sat upright again and began to thrust once more, but it faded quickly. 

Xue Yang was nearly incoherent and lost between them. He felt when Song Lan carved open his throat once more and Xiao Xingchen bit at the tender cut, widening it with his teeth and ripping away a chunk of flesh, chewing it. He could again feel that singular piece of himself as Xiao Xingchen swallowed it, the way it felt sliding down his throat before it vanished - and at the same time, his tongue was licking along his actual collar bone, exposed to the open air, and Song Lan ripped open his belly and shoved his hand into his guts to trace his own cock inside of Xue Yang with his finger tips while he fucked him. 

At that touch, he came all over Xiao Xingchen's pretty fingers. 

Song Lan didn't stop fucking him, but he abandoned the knife, leaving it buried inside Xue Yang as he had earlier, this time in his heart. It would have made Xue Yang roll his eyes if he'd been coherent enough for any sort of proper thought. As it was, he clung desperately to Xiao Xingchen's arm around his chest. Song Lan had his thigh pinned against his shoulder, his hip snapping and breaking and rebreaking as it healed over and over and he continued to fuck into him all the same. At one point, Xiao Xingchen grabbed Song Lan by the back of his neck and dragged him into a hard kiss, and Xue Yang could feel Song Lan come inside him, deep and long. When he pulled away, he lowered Xue Yang's leg, and the damage and come and everything else vanished, just like the blood and wounds always did. 

Xiao Xingchen still didn't let him go. He turned Xue Yang's face to the side and kissed him, softly at first. "Was it enough?" Xue Yang hummed. It was all he was capable of. He still felt too large for his own skin. Almost mad with every bit of sensation and all the feeling  _ life _ inside him. "Good. I'm glad." He smiled, his eyes crinkling around the corners. "You owe me a rather spectacular blow job. But later." He pressed a careful kiss to Xue Yang's cheek. "Right now, I think it'd be nice if we all just… lie down for a bit. Together." 

"Here," Song Lan said quietly. He scooped Xue Yang into his arms, away from Xiao Xingchen's hold. Xue Yang wanted to protest, to demand to be put down and insist he could walk on his own. But he didn't. Song Lan set him on the bed a few short seconds later, anyhow, and then he and Xiao Xingchen were lying down on either side of him, as they had the one other time they'd been together in this bed. 

Song Lan brushed Xue Yang's hair away from his face. "Thank you. For not letting the house keep Xingchen." 

"I can't recall exactly what happened," Xiao Xingchen admitted, linking his fingers with Xue Yang's. "I'm not certain I want to know." 

"You probably don't," Song Lan sighed, "but I'm sure Xue Yang will tell you anyway." 

Xue Yang rolled his eyes. "The house possessed you or whatever and you killed Song Lan a few times, I guess. You were eating him a few bites at the time. Sort of like I did to Poppy and the tall man. But the house doesn't know my secret to getting rid of them for good, so it didn't work. Anyway, it was hot as fuck. I'd totally get off to you doing that again, you know. If it was you and not the goddamn house, anyway." 

"Perhaps," was all Xiao Xingchen said. 

"You can get rid of the other ghosts in the house?" Song Lan asked. Xue Yang nodded and grinned up at the ceiling, taunting the house. "And it's permanent?"

"As far as I know," Xue Yang said lightly. "We'll give it a while and see if Poppy or the tall man come back. I doubt it, though. I could feel them vanish for good. They don't exist anymore. But we'll see." 

Xiao Xingchen curled up a little closer. "Let's not do anything for a while, hm? I'd like to be dead in peace." Song Lan snorted softly. Xue Yang cackled. Xiao Xingchen shook his head at the both of them. "I suppose that's too much to ask for, isn't it, with the two of you?" 

"Probably," Xue Yang said, a little too cheerfully for anyone's comfort.

**Author's Note:**

> couple notes, feel free to ignore:  
> 1\. i tagged the hill house tv series deliberately, and not the book - this doesn't resemble the book at all and i specifically reference the characters from the tv series NOT the book (i've read most of it, just got bored with it and never finished it; i read something like 3+ novels each week, not including all the fanfic i devour, shit really has to hold my attention) - but it also definitely aint AHS murder house bc if it was i'd have used different side characters and the vibe would be way different. i specifically needed the red room and its juju tho, so i went with hill house over murder house. a murder house au would be fun as fuck and id totally be down to write it - but it would be much different. (murder house vibes for yi city trio thooooo sl & xxc + a-qing as their kid moving to murder house with cheating!sl and side-piece xy? i think yes)   
> 2\. if you don't have anything nice to say in my comments, then don't say anything at all - remember your lessons from preschool. presumably, we are all adults here. if you are NOT an adult, you shouldn't be reading this shit anyway and perhaps you need to go have a conversation with whatever adults are responsible for you about how and why you are consuming media irresponsibly.   
> 3\. this is one of my favorite things i've ever written in my life and i'm absurdly proud of it, honestly   
> 4\. a few nice words would be appreciated, but im not expecting it. this is niche as fuck and i wrote it for myself only.   
> 5\. heres my [twitter](https://twitter.com/wingsofwaxx/) if you wanna come chat or whatever


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